Blogging reloaded
Today I decided to move my blog from the self hosted Drupal installation to wordpress.com, but then I sticked with upgrading my Drupal installation and a blogging API so that I can author content from my Desktop Computer.
Things have changed lately and I wanted reduce all duties and focus on new products for my company. So getting away from Drupal was my goal for today, but it did not work out.
I like the style of Wordpress.com, the administration interface is usable (compared to Blogger.com) and the preinstalled theme rocks.
Uploading to Wordpress worked just fine using Windows Live Writer.
But – to make things more readable – I just wanted to change the font size, which is possible by editing CSS but costs $15. Somehow this is not right, I just wanted to improve the readability of my blog and I should pay $15 for? No, this price may be ok for more elaborate style adjustments, but not for changing the font size.
Then I looked for possibilities to convert my older Drupal posts to Wordpress. But I gave up after asking google for a while.
So I was setting up another free blog on Blogger.com to see what the alternatives look like. Windows Live Writer was able to post the same content without a problem.
The administration UI of Blogger.com confused me a lot but editing CSS was possible. After some reconsideration and imagining that I may lose all my history of blog posts, I considered updating Drupal to version 6 and see if there are some new features that enable me to upload content. Actually, editing on the Desktop and seamlessly putting pictures in my blog posts was the one of the main motivators for today.
The Drupal update ran fine, I had some migration issues, but the site is now online again with all the old content. Even very old blog posts that have (ugly) inline images displayed fine after a some tweaks.
I also activated the Blog API in the hope that picture uploading would just work from within Windows Live Writer.
But picture uploading failed, I soon found a blog that describes how to configure Drupal and LiveWriter. After that, WLW was then able to download the theme for the previewer and also adjusted the font size in the editor.
But sadly, picture uploading just failed again :( Like noted here in the last comment, a small adjustment to the authenticated user permissions in Drupal was the key: “administer content with blog api” must be enabled for “Authenticated Users”.
Now, another goal for this update is that I can share – if there is anyone interested – more of the things I am working at. I’d like to be more live, more present, and the first step to do this is to make the blog more appealing. Graphics, so to speak.
Expect screenshots and code about the projects I am working on.
Right now, I am in a very productive phase, winter is over and the sun starts making a comeback. My sleep cycle is somewhat distorted. Bed time is between 3 to 5 am and I wake up not before 10 am.
One good thing about this is that I don’t want to sleep: motivation is generally a good indicator for personal progress, but I also don’t want to miss the few sun-rays coming through my window while I am working, so this has to change back to normal, which is – for me – 8 hours sleep and getting up between 8 to 9 am.
The other good thing is that I have a lot of new ideas and I am also actually working on some of them.
But that will be content for future posts.